His poems to male friends are of so impassioned a character that they aroused the protests of a very tolerant age.

Very little is known of Barnfield's life.

Born in 1574 he published his first poem, _The Affectionate Shepherd_, at the age of 20, while still at the University.

It was issued anonymously, revealed much fresh poetic feeling and literary skill, and is addressed to a youth of whom the poet declares:-- "If it be sin to love a lovely lad, Oh then sin I." In his subsequent volume, _Cynthia_ (1595), Barnfield disclaims any intention in the earlier poem beyond that of imitating Virgil's second eclogue.

But the sonnets in this second volume are even more definitely homosexual than the earlier poem, though he goes on to tell how at last he found a lass whose beauty surpassed that "of the swain Whom I never could obtain." After the age of 31 Barnfield wrote no more, but, being in easy circumstances, retired to his beautiful manor house and country estate in Shropshire, lived there for twenty years and died leaving a wife and son.[85] It seems probable that he was of bisexual temperament, and that, as not infrequently happens in such cases, the homosexual element developed early under the influence of a classical education and university associations, while the normal heterosexual element developed later and, as may happen in bisexual persons, was associated with the more commonplace and prosaic side of life.